Category Archives: issues of morality or ethics

Malignancies

There’s nothing remotely funny, of course, about rabid Islamists beheading innocent Westerners they have kidnapped (or their fellow Muslims, for that matter).

Yet, there is something bizarrely droll about the characterization of such slaughter, and in particular its filming and the dissemination of the resultant videos, as a “recruitment tool.” According to experts like Peter Neumann, who directs a center for the study of political violence in London, that is the videos’ goal, based on past successes in attracting new recruits.

What I found almost humorous was the unthinkability (to put it mildly) of any group of normal human beings seeking adherents by murdering people on camera. Can you imagine the Mormon Church cutting off the heads of gentiles (its name for non-Mormons) in order to attract worshippers? The Republican party, to entice independents? The Rotary Club, to garner new members? The local Jewish Federation, to lure donors? You get the droll.

And then the all-too-serious question presents itself: What does it say about a cause that it attracts people by means of the gleeful shedding of innocent blood? And a corollary: What does it say about the people so attracted?

It is fashionable to seek to “understand” forces and individuals who do malevolent things, to put the acts into a “context” that makes them if not justifiable, at least comprehensible. There are times, though, what seems to be evil is, in fact, just evil, pure and simple. Like our times.

Likewise fashionable these days are attempts to characterize the Islamic State movement, against which President Obama has effectively declared war (explaining that “There can be no reasoning – no negotiation – with this brand of evil”), and other Islamist hordes as not warranting a determined response by the civilized global community.

For all the odiousness of the groups’ means, the geopolitical fashionistas (hesitant Europeans and American isolationists alike) argue, such militants don’t threaten us directly. ISIS’s goal, in particular, is only to establish a Muslim caliphate in Eastern lands, not to harm the West. We have no camel in such races, they protest, no business involving our country in disputes that, in the end, are between this version of Islam and that version of Islam (and those, and those other ones too).

Intriguingly, though, current events have served up a compelling metaphor here.

For there is another deadly world crisis out there, likewise far away; (for the most part) and the larger world is determined, rightly, to deal with it. No one counsels ignoring it for its distance.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says the number of Ebola cases in West Africa is increasing, and has asked UN member states to donate $1 billion to tackle the epidemic. President Obama announced that the United States will send troops, material to build field hospitals, additional health care workers and medical supplies to the tune of $75 million. The World Bank is promising $200 million to deal with the crisis. The World Health Organization has pledged $100 million. Britain is delivering a field hospital to the area. $181 million has been promised from the European Union and $50 million from the Gates Foundation.

Ebola, which results in uncontrolled internal and external bleeding and easily spreads itself around, is evil. Yes, yes, the virus is morally innocent, just doing what its DNA compels it to do. But from the perspective of thinking, feeling human beings who affirm life as an invaluable gift, the disease is a scourge, something to be fought and driven into submission, ideally eradicated. Even though it is “way over there,” doesn’t threaten most of us directly and, historically, has asserted itself only on the African continent.

Millions of people in Africa are threatened by Ebola, and it is not easily contained. It thrives on ignorance (like that of villagers who have killed health workers, believing they are the cause of the disease) and attacks not only those who contract it casually but but exemplary human beings (like such health workers) as well.

Is not the biological scourge we all know must be routed a stunning counterpart to the sociopathic one that produces its own rivers of blood?

Comparing people to a disease has, understandably, become anathema in civil discourse. But such rhetoric is offensive because it is employed imprecisely or carelessly. Sometimes, though, it is an apt metaphor. Like when applied to groups that exult in slaughter of human beings, that seek to spread and whose recruitment tools include mugging behind masks for the cameras before cheerfully slitting throats.

Stubborn Spirit

The birthday cake was ablaze with 105 candles, and many among the scores of people present at the Czech embassy in London this past spring for the party would not have been there – or anywhere – had it not been for the man in whose honor they had gathered.

Nicholas Winton, who remains in full possession of his faculties, including his sense of humor, saved the lives of 669 children, mostly Jewish, during the months before the Second World War broke out in 1939. There are an estimated 6000 people, many of those children, now grown, along with their own descendants, who are alive today because of his efforts, which went unrecognized for decades.

Born in 1909 in West Hampstead, England, Mr. Winton was baptized as a member of the Anglican Church and became a successful stockbroker. He lived a carefree life until December 1938, when a friend, Martin Blake, asked him to forgo a ski vacation and visit him in Czechoslovakia, where Mr. Blake had traveled in his capacity as an associate of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, a group that was providing assistance to refugees created by the German annexation of the Sudetenland regions of the country. Together, the two men visited refugee camps filled to capacity with Jews and political opponents of the Nazis.

Mr. Winton was moved by the refugees’ plight. Knowing, too, about the violence that had been unleashed against the Jewish community in Germany and Austria during the Kristallnacht riots a mere month earlier, he resolved to do for children from Sudetenland what British Jewish agencies were doing to rescue German and Austrian Jewish children.

Audaciously (and illegally) “borrowing” the name of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, he began taking applications from parents, first at a hotel room and then from an office in central Prague. Thousands lined up to try to save their children’s lives.

(When an interviewer recently remarked to Mr. Winton that his actions “required quite a bit of ingenuity,” the interviewee responded, “No, it just required a printing press to get the notepaper printed.” And asked about travel documents he had forged and the “bit of blackmail” that he had employed to save children, Winton, seemingly amused, just replied, “It worked. That’s the main thing.”)

Returning to London, Mr. Winton raised money to fund the children transports, including funds demanded by the British government to bankroll the children’s eventual departure from Britain; and he found foster homes for the refugee children.

The first transport organized by Mr. Winton left Prague by plane for London on March 14, 1939, the day before the Germans occupied the Czech lands. After the Germans established a Protectorate in the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, Winton organized seven further transports that departed by rail out of Prague and across Germany to the Atlantic Coast, then traveled by ship across the English Channel to Britain. At the train station in London, British foster parents waited to collect the children. The last trainload of children left Prague on August 2, 1939, and the rescue activities ceased when Germany invaded Poland and Britain declared war on Germany at the beginning of September 1939

During the war, Mr. Winton volunteered for an ambulance unit for the Red Cross, then trained pilots for the Royal Air Force. He married, raised a family and earned a comfortable living. For 50 years, his rescue efforts remained virtually unknown until 1988, when his wife found a scrapbook from 1939 with all the children’s photos and names. (Asked why he kept his secret so long, he explained, “I didn’t really keep it secret, I just didn’t talk about it.”)

Once his story got out, Mr. Winton received a letter of thanks from the late former Israeli president Ezer Weizman, was made an honorary citizen of Prague and, in 2002, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his service to humanity. His recent projects include providing help to the mentally handicapped people and building homes for the elderly.

It would be easy to place Nicholas Winton’s story securely in the “Righteous Gentiles” file, along with the accounts of other non-Jews who proved themselves exemplars of humanity. But his life, as it happens, is not that simple. It may speak less to the greatness of chassidei umos ha’olam and more to the pinteleh Yid.

For the bittersweet fact is that Nicholas Winton was born Nicholas Wertheimer, and was baptized and raised Christian on the decision of his parents, assimilated German Jews.

Immoral “Morality”

In a good illustration of just how thick people who are intellectually gifted can be, the well-known biologist and militant atheist Richard Dawkins recently offered his opinion that Down syndrome children would best be prevented from being born. “It would be immoral,” he wrote, “to bring it into the world if you have the choice.”

“It”?

The dehumanization says it all.

Professor Dawkins’ judgment of birthing a developmentally disabled child as “immoral” stems from his belief (shared by another famously mindless professor, Peter Singer, who also advocates euthanasia for severely handicapped infants and elderly) that an act’s morality should be gauged entirely by whether or not it increases happiness or suffering.

Mr. Dawkins’ comment drew considerable fire, as well it should have. Some of those who assailed the professor for his – let’s here reclaim an important adjective – immoral stance focused on the factual error of his creepy calculus. Two psychology researchers wrote, for example, in something of an understatement, that “individuals with Down syndrome can experience more happiness and potential for success than Mr. Dawkins seems to appreciate.”

In fact, 99% of respondents to a survey of those with Down syndrome (yes, 99%) report that they are happy with their lives. Moreover, 88% of older siblings of people with Down syndrome reported feeling that they are better people for the fact.

Then there were those who addressed Mr. Dawkins not with statistics but with experience. Like Sarah Palin, whose son has Down syndrome, and who generously offered to “let you meet my son if you promise to open your mind, your eyes, and your heart to a unique kind of absolute beauty.”

There is no question that families raising Down syndrome children face many challenges, medical, emotional, educational and societal. But anyone who has embraced that privilege – and anyone, for that matter, who has experienced the delight of interacting with Down children or adults, whose guileless and endearing personalities can be overwhelming – understand how much more perceptive the much-maligned Mrs. Palin is than the much-celebrated Mr. Dawkins.

Truth be told, though, offering statistics or personal experience about the wonder and beauty of Down children is really beside the point – the most important point, that is, namely, the inherent folly of the Dawkinsian understanding of happiness.

Those of us who are naturally happy are very fortunate. And all of us are indeed to aim at serving Hashem with happiness (Tehillim, 100:2). But happiness is not tethered to tranquil or easy lives; many people who face adversities unimaginable to those of us who live relatively comfortable, untroubled lives are nevertheless happy.

Edifying is the famous story of Reb Zusha of Hanipoli, the impoverished, long-suffering but joyful Chassid who, according to the famous story, received two esteemed guests at his dilapidated home. They told him that they had asked the Maggid of Mezeritch how one can bless Hashem as the Mishnah (Berachos 54a) directs, “for the bad just as for the good,” and that the Maggid had sent them to him.

Puzzled, he responded: “How would I know? He should have sent you to someone who has experienced suffering.”

Happiness doesn’t happen; it is achieved. And its achievement is not tied to ease or fun or lack of adversity. It results from recognizing that life, ultimately, is about meaning. True meaning, that is, not some imagined or invented meaning. Life’s meaning that comes from serving the Divine. That concept may be imponderable to atheists like Richard Dawkins or Peter Singer. But it is the reason for human existence, for the bestowal of free will on the subset of creation we call men and women.

Down syndrome, as it happens and as we should always remember, is hardly the only condition “out there.” There are other disabilities as well, some or all of whose sufferers Messrs. Dawkins and Singer may consider unworthy of the world as well. Only they’re not.

Consider, for example, those who have “23 Chromosome Pair Syndrome,” which is invariably fatal. Sufferers are susceptible to a host of maladies, including heart disease, high blood pressure, asthma and numerous forms of cancer, and are likely to suffer bouts of mild or more serious depression over the course of their lives.

They are also prone to headaches, nosebleeds, painful joints and broken bones. And, at some point, they can become so disabled that they require others to care for them.

The syndrome happens to be quite common.

Indeed, it’s ubiquitous.

It’s what we call “normal” human life.

Kidneys, Cash and Caring

Over recent years, “Israelis have played a disproportionate role” in organ trafficking, The New York Times reported recently in a lengthy front-page story. Some Israeli entrepreneurs “have pocketed enormous sums for arranging overseas transplants for patients who are paired with foreign donors,” according to court filings and government documents.

The organs in question are kidneys. Most of us are born with two, although only one is necessary for living a normal life. Numerous people in renal failure have received kidneys donated by friends or relatives – even altruistic strangers.

But the supply of transplantable organs is estimated by the World Health Organization to meet no more than a tenth of the need. And so a market for kidneys has emerged, and thousands of patients receive illicit transplants each year, often facilitated by brokers, like the accused Israelis, who match potential donors wishing to sell one of their kidneys to someone who desperately needs one. The brokers maintain that they operate legally and are simply engaged in facilitating legitimate business transactions.

The unaddressed but poignant question here, though, is why the sale of kidneys is so widely perceived as immoral. Opponents of such sales say that since poor people, likely from third-world countries, will be those most likely willing to exchange one of their kidneys for cash, embracing such activity would amount to exploitation of the poor. Others counter that providing impoverished people a means of garnering the sort of funds that they would otherwise have no other option of amassing would allow them to use the income to escape the poverty cycle, by investing in businesses or other enterprises. Encouraging kidney selling, these proponents say, will not only save countless lives but represents a humane way to narrow the global gap between the haves and have-nots.

In fact, while global health organizations stand steadfast against the sale of kidneys, legalizing commercial donation is no longer the fringe position it once was. The American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons have called for pilot projects to test incentives for donation, potentially including cash payments, even though such a change would require amending a 30-year-old federal law.

That larger issue aside, though, what accounts for “the tiny nation” of Israel’s “outsize role in the global organ trade?” The story suggests it is the result of “religious objections… to recovering organs from brain-dead patients.”

That is likely true. In other countries organs, overwhelmingly, are retrieved from the recently deceased, declared so because they lack electrical activity in their brains but who may still be breathing with the aid of a respirator. In Israel, however, “religious objections” to equating lack of discernable brain function with death have resulted in a “severe” shortage of kidneys for transplantation.

The concept of accepting “brain death” as the equivalent of death has been embraced by modern medicine since the 1960s. But not by some of the past decade’s most widely respected poskim in the world – including Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, Rabbi Yosef Sholom Elyashiv, Rabbi Aharon Soloveichik (who reported that his brother, Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveichik, held the same position) and Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, zecher tzaddikim liv’rocho.

The “brain death” standard, though, has been a boon for transplantation. A person declared dead but still breathing and circulating blood, is an ideal “host” from whom to “harvest” organs.

Even among those who accept a “brain death” definition of death, though, some fear that, eager to procure organs, overzealous doctors may be tempted to prematurely declare deaths to have occurred. As for those who respect the decisions of the above-mentioned poskim that brain-death does not mean life has ended, harvesting vital organs from a brain-dead patient is no less than murder.

Saving a life is a most weighty imperative, of course, but halacha does not permit one life to be taken to save the life of another – no matter how diminished the “quality” of the life of the former, no matter how great the potential of the life of the latter. Halacha, moreover, forbids any action that might hasten death, including the death of a person in extremis.

Contrary to what Reform and secular activists like to insinuate, the great majority of Israelis, whether or not they lead strictly observant lives, in fact recognize the importance of halachic concepts, particularly in matters of life and death. And so it is not outlandish to imagine that rejection of the “brain death” criterion may indeed have much to do with the chronic kidney shortage in Israel.

What is unremarked upon, though, in the long Times story is something that can be gleaned from an accompanying chart that lists 14 developed countries, ranked in order of their per capita kidney donations from donors who have been declared deceased. The country with the fewest such donors is Israel.

But also, pardon the pun, harvestable with a bit of effort from the chart are the rankings of those same countries with regard to kidney donations by living donors, and they are telling. There, high up, above places like Canada, Switzerland, Italy, Germany and Spain, is Israel.

Republication or posting of the above only with permission from Hamodia

Ugly Times

It could well be, as some have charged, that the New York Times’ choice of photographs to accompany its reportage from Israel and Gaza has been skewed to emphasize Hamas’ grievances; or it could be that the imbalance of photos is merely a manifestation of the old journalistic adage “If it bleeds, it leads.”

Despite my general satisfaction with the paper’s actual reportage on the conflict, I lean to the former judgment. And I have similar misgivings about headlines that are created for dispatches. It’s not widely known that media have “headline writers” over whom reporters have no control. There have been several examples of headlines that didn’t truly reflect the articles beneath them, and in ways that led readers (of the headlines alone, at least – and that’s a lot of readers) to regard Israel negatively.

A recent Times report began with the following sentences: “Militant rockets can be seen launching from crowded neighborhoods, near apartment buildings, schools and hotels. Hamas fighters have set traps for Israeli soldiers in civilian homes and stored weapons in mosques and schools. Tunnels have been dug beneath private property.” Its headline? “Israel Says That Hamas Uses Civilian Shields, Reviving Debate,” as if the technical issue of the legal definition of a human shield under international law (and what “Israel Says” about it) were more compelling than the undisputed facts that open it. The technical definition debate is part of the piece, to be sure. But the more essential facts that the headline might well have synopsized were what the piece’s first sentences describe.

Another head of the hydra that is the Old Grey Lady is its business department, which recently demonstrated an astoundingly deficient judgment. In an advertisement in its July 20 travel section touting a New York Times tour package to Israel and the West Bank, the paper touts how participants in its offering will experience “a fascinating journey through the geographical, cultural, historical and political landscapes of the region.” And the “featured expert” for, presumably, the latter landscape is… Hanan Ashrawi.

Ms. Ashwari, of course is a well-known Palestinian activist, legislator and member of the PLO’s Executive Committee; and her portrayals of Israel are little short of rabid. Citing her denial (in Arabic, in an Arab periodical) that there were ever any Jewish refugees from Arab countries, the American Jewish Committee’s David Harris remarked that “Hanan Ashrawi is to truth what smoking is to health.”

The articulate but malign Ms. Ashwari regularly uses terms like “ethnic cleansing,” “apartheid” and “the premeditated killing of civilians” with regard to Israel. “Israel’s calculated crimes” is one of her particularly cherished phrases.

Back in 2000, when two Israeli reservists, having mistakenly entered Ramallah, were captured, killed and grossly mutilated to the cheers of crowds (remember the fellow elatedly displaying his bloody hands for all to see?), Ms. Ashwari asserted, defensively and falsely, that the pair of soldiers (who were wearing army fatigues and whose car bore Israeli plates) were “undercover Israeli agents that had infiltrated” the town and were recognized by her fellow Palestinians “as members of the Death Squads that had been responsible for assassinations and provocations” (Jordan Times, Oct. 29, 2000).

Two years earlier, Ms. Ashrawi founded MIFTAH – the “Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy,” which was caught a number of times offering alleged quotes of Israeli leaders that turned out to be invented. Last year it was forced to remove an article from its website that, in the context of attacking President Obama for hosting Pesach sedarim in the White House, accused Jews of using “the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover.” (The group, graciously, later offered its “sincerest regret” for the error.)

More recently, the Palestinian propagandist said that “Israel’s military assault on Gaza constitutes an act of state terror and a deliberate war crime” and that Israel’s building in the West Bank and Jerusalem “constitute another aspect of Israel’s aggression and impunity.”

So, to put it most mildly, Ms. Ashwari is about the least objective observer one might choose to feature as the “expert” to enlighten tourists seeking an objective and factual lesson about the region’s political situation. But she was the Times’ choice.

One has to wonder if the newspaper would ever have dared offer, say, a right-wing member of the Knesset (whose most extreme member would pale in radicalism next to the choice the paper made) for the edification of American visitors partaking of one of its tourism packages.

Alerted to the advertisement by an Agudath Israel constituent, I immediately wrote the paper’s “public editor” or ombudsman, to ask about the wisdom of the choice of “expert” for the tour. On July 21, her assistant, Jonah Bromwich, replied that although ads are not part of the public editor’s bailiwick he would pass on my note to an executive in the paper’s advertising department.

Despite several follow-up inquiries, Mr. Bromwich informed me that my communications had all been forwarded to the advertising department, but that “unfortunately,” he “cannot compel them to respond.”

Something Is Wrong With Gazans

The solution to the long and ongoing war between Hamas and Israel is an obvious one, and it consists of two words: Gazan Spring.

Everyone knows the facts. Hamas, pledged to Israel’s destruction, is the de facto government in Gaza. In the Palestinian parliamentary elections of January, 2006, it won 74 out of 132 seats. Even though the United States and the European Union refused to recognize Hamas’ right to govern any area of the Palestinian Authority, it took control of Gaza and, began to fight with Fatah, its Palestinian rival. Over subsequent years, clashes and truces between the two groups became the recurrent reality. Many hundreds of Palestinians have been killed there by their fellow Palestinians.

Just before the recent spate of violence between Hamas and Israel, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas entered into an agreement with Hamas to form a unity government. That latest attempt to heal the rift between the Palestinian faction that aims to eradicate Israel and the one that professes to back a two-state solution was widely expected to eventually meet the fate of previous, similar Fatah-Hamas pacts, which fell apart as a result of the two groups’ inherently diametric stances.

Now, with Israel’s full-hearted campaign to undermine Hamas’ ability to target of Israeli population centers – with some missiles having reached as far as Tel Aviv and Yerushalayim – there seems little hope that Hamas will emerge with anything but the defiant pride of a gravely wounded but still standing “freedom fighter” or, to use the more apt term here, “terrorist.”

The key lies in the phrase “still standing.” It was the Palestinian population that provided Hamas what legitimacy it has as an elected entity. A population giveth, but it can also taketh away. The media claims that there are many Gazans, perhaps even a majority of them, who are disillusioned, and deeply, with Hamas.

That would be no wonder. Gaza’s infrastructure has been deteriorating for years; civil servants’ salaries haven’t been paid for months, and Hamas’ coffers (although, tragically, not its arsenals) are empty. The blockade of its ports and borders has prevented the building of new homes (with the tons of concrete smuggled into Gaza employed exclusively to reinforce the tunnels used to attack Israelis). Social services have faltered, corruption of officials has increased, Egypt has withdrawn its support from the government and now, once again, Hamas’ lust to kill Jews has brought the population a rain of bombs and their resultant casualties (mostly, but, unfortunately and inevitably, not all of them terrorists).

Any sane Gazan should recognize the origin of his problems.

And if there are sane Gazans, they have presumably heard that despotic rulers and oppressive governments have, for better or worse, been toppled by populaces over recent years in places like Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

Were there a similar uprising in Gaza, a Gazan Spring, Mr. Abbas would be relieved of the temptation, to which he cravenly succumbed, to make any new deal with the devil that is Hamas, and might be emboldened to do more toward making peace with Israel than just mouth the bluster and platitudes that have been his stock in trade until now.

Whether Israel could come to trust a Palestinian leader of a unified populace is not easily predictable. But the removal of Hamas from governance and its relegation to a mere renegade terrorist group firmly rejected by the clear majority of Palestinians would certainly sweeten the pot for Israelis (who, through regular elections, choose governments to represent their collective will).

A Gazan Spring wouldn’t come without bloodshed. Societal upheavals, particularly in the Arab world, seldom do. But shouldn’t that world’s defiant slogan Ash-sha`b yurid isqat an-nizam (“the people want to bring down the regime”) be ringing out in Gaza City? Shouldn’t the vision of a bomber-less sky over their heads and open borders, not to mention of an eventual Palestinian state living in cooperation and prosperity alongside Israel, motivate Gazans to stand up for their futures?

One has to wonder at the fact that it hasn’t, that after eight years of Hamas rule, with all the suffering they have brought, the Gazan street hasn’t seen fit to assert itself. Perhaps the populace just lacks the courage and determination that so many other Middle Eastern peoples seem to possess.

Or perhaps – though one hopes it isn’t the case – Gazans just share the visceral and ugly animosity that is the lifeblood of Hamas and similar groups.

After all, as Chazal teach us, just as love can bend the clear line of reason, so can hatred.

Agudath Israel Statement About Arrests in Murder of Arab Teen

Reports of arrests of members of the Jewish community in connection with the recent murder of an Arab youth, Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir, should fill us all with revulsion.

The Jewish faith does not tolerate violence other than in self-defense and condemns murder as a grave crime. To take the life of an innocent human being is not only an indefensible, evil act but, here, brings our people down to the level of our most implacable and cruel enemies. It is a chillul Hashem, a desecration of G-d’s name.

The entire Jewish world was plunged into mourning at the news of the three innocent Jewish teens who were murdered several weeks ago by as-yet unapprehended parties. And mourning was, and is, the proper response of individuals to such crimes, not misguided attempts by vigilantes to exact “revenge,” which is the Creator’s to dispense.

May the families of both the murdered Jewish boys and the murdered Arab boy be comforted. And may governmental authorities successfully bring all the murderers to the justice that can be meted out in this world.

We beseech the Creator, the One who “makes peace in His heavens,” to send us the day soon when peace will reign over the Holy Land.

Agudath Israel Statement on the Murder of the Three Kidnapped Israeli Teens

Agudath Israel of America joins Jews and civilized people the world over in anguish and agony over the news of the vicious murders of the three boys kidnapped on June 12, Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-ad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach, Hy”d.

This horrific act is, in the end, not a crime against Israel or Jews alone, but against humanity – in both senses of the word. It bespeaks the deepest and most revolting inhumanity imaginable, the seizing of innocent, idealistic young people and the casual snuffing out of their lives and futures.

Hamas and its allies, which now include the Palestinian Authority, are ultimately responsible for these premeditated, heinous murders. The hatred and incitement that have characterized so much of the campaign to establish a new Arab state alongside Israel are what have yielded these young lifeless bodies, and all the death and destruction born of Arab terrorism over the years.

There are those who believe that all people are, deep down, good. Hamas and its friends, along with other terrorist groups and rogue nations like Iran, give the lie to that lovely but naïve fantasy.

It is our hope that the nations of the free world and their leaders fully confront that fact and comprehend its implications.

Musing: Stop and Wonder

Sometimes a statistic just makes you stop and wonder.

One such fact came near the start of an essay in Hillsdale College’s publication Imprimis.

Anthony Daniels, a British psychiatrist, writes: “By the time they are 15 or 16, twice as many children in Britain have a television as have a biological father living at home. The child may be father of the man, but the television is father to the child.”

It’s unlikely that things are terribly different on this side of the pond. The implications not only for the family but for society as a whole are… well, disquieting, to say the very least.

An Enlightened Letter-Writer Pinpoints the Ramapo Problem

A letter writer to the New York Jewish Week, although acknowledging that the state aid formula for public schools has wrought havoc on the East Ramapo School District’s ability to maintain important services to the district’s public school children, asserts that the formula “has little to do with the disaster that the East Ramapo School District has become, a fact that in itself is undoubtedly fostering anti-Semitism in the Hudson Valley and beyond.”

What fuels the Jew-hatred, the letter writer explains, is “that now one-third of the district’s children go to public school while the rest go to yeshivas. As the haredi population in the district increased, many middle class families moved…”

“There is a palpable fear,” he continues, “that the same thing could happen” in other nearby communities. “With so many irrational reasons to be anti-Semitic throughout history, why does there have to be one that is arguably rational?”

So the problem, it seems, isn’t anything charedim have done. The problem is that there are charedim.

Maybe deportation, or the relocation of the problem population to some sort of mandated area, might work.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life